Crest Chargers coach Mark Barnes has blazed a trail(We have the details on this trail…NEG, SG, Dudley, Grimsley and Ragsdale are all on here!)

Crest Chargers(11-3) versus the Northern Guilford Nighthawks(13-2) tomorrow night in Raleigh, at N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium, and the coach of the Boiling Springs Crest Chargers has blazed a trail and that trail has taken him through Guilford County and it has involved many Guilford County connections, at one time or another….

Mark Barnes, head coach of the Crest Chargers has a brother Daryl Barnes and Daryl Barnes coached the Richmond County Raiders to multiple State 4-A Titles, while down in Rockingham, N.C. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 State Championships and they hit one stretch where they must have won 4 in-a-row back in the late 80’s/early 90’s….Mark Barnes was with his brother for a few of those and Mark was also with Daryl Barnes, when DB was the head coach at Northeast Guilford High School back around 1984-1985….DB coached the Rams to a conference championship back in those days and he did the same thing while he was over at Southern Guilford, just a couple of years before that and I believe Mark Barnes was with him at SG for a short period of time as well….

Both Barnes brothers and family hail from over around Trinity and later on after the NEG stint, as an assistant coach for his brother Daryl, Mark Barnes made the move to Reidsville and was in charge of the Rams club, before Jimmy Teague arrived on the scene….

Somewhere in my notes, I have Mark Barnes up at Brevard for a brief period of time, but I will have to further investigate that one……

So we have Southern Guilford, Northeast Guilford, Richmond County, Reidsville, Brevard, Scotland County(right before the current Crest stop) and as you can tell, Mark Barnes has blazed quite a trail……

The other wild thing about the Mark Barnes Trail is that he has followed a very successful coach at Boiling Springs Crest High School…..The redhead, Roy Kirby, was in charge of the Crest Chargers before Mark Barnes took over and Kirby’s Chargers defeated the Dudley Panthers for the State 3-AA Title over at BB&T Field back in 2004…..Crest forfeited a game to the Grimsley Whirlies back in 2005, in the 4-A semifinals that put the Whirlies in the Championship game, against Greenville Rose…Crest defeated Ragsdale all the way back in 2001, in the State 3-A semifinals in Jamestown, to knock Coach Tommy Norwood and his Tigers led by freshman Toney Baker, out of the playoffs…..

All of the above under the watch of Coach Roy Kirby, the man at helm, before Mark Barnes blazed his trail into Boiling Springs……